


Cooking Things with Carlos the Scientist

by teatearsandbbc



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: But also, Carlos is a Good Boyfriend, Cooking, Domestic, Fluff, Food, M/M, Slight Hurt/Comfort, Tooth-Rottingly Sweet, carlos is a science dork
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-17
Updated: 2018-01-17
Packaged: 2019-03-06 03:37:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13402650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teatearsandbbc/pseuds/teatearsandbbc
Summary: Carlos decides to cook Cecil dinner after the radio host has an awful day at work. As it turns out, they both enjoy this far more than expected.Domestic as all hell, so sweet you're likely to get cavities, and generally our two favorite nerds being schmoopy and in love. Set after Ep. 29.





	Cooking Things with Carlos the Scientist

As soon as Carlos heard Cecil come back from the weather and tell his listeners he had been gone in the subway for years, that he had witnessed all the vast span of human suffering, he packed up his equipment and headed for Cecil’s apartment. He had a spare key (Cecil had actually given him the key two weeks before the incident at the bowling alley. He had thought it odd at the time, but could only be grateful now.) and he wanted to be there when the radio host got home. There were still a few minutes left in Cecil’s show, Carlos knew, and there would be the filing and prep for the next morning’s broadcast and the half-hour of keening to Station Management and feeding the break room scorpions to be done before Cecil could come home. But all the same, he wanted to make sure Cecil didn’t come home to an empty house. Not tonight.

Once he had unlocked the door of Cecil’s surprisingly airy apartment, breathing in the smell of vanilla from his candles, he wandered to the kitchen and checked the clock. It was barely four. It would be a good two hours before Cecil got home. Carlos stared, lost in thought, at the oven for a minute or two before an idea sparked in his mind. Cecil could use a good meal when he got home, and while Carlos wasn’t a gourmet chef by any means, he figured could manage some solid comfort food.

He let himself out of the apartment and jogged across the street to the Ralph’s. They had most of what he needed and he moved quickly, gathering the legal ingredients from the shelves and covertly slipping a twenty to the gloved hand that emerged from among the boxes of wheat-free pasta. He tucked the box of very illegal wheat pasta into an inside pocket of his lab coat, paid for the rest of the groceries more traditionally, and was back in Cecil’s apartment within fifteen minutes, laying everything out.

Carlos loved to cook. Some of his fondest childhood memories were set in his  _ abuela _ ’s kitchen, helping her and his mother make chorizo or masa. They used to let him stuff the tamales, scooping out the extra six helpings of filling he would pile in whenever he wasn’t looking and always congratulating him on what beautiful tamales he made. 

But even aside from the nostalgic joy cooking brought him, it was something that fascinated Carlos. Cooking was effectively a series of tightly controlled chemical reactions that transformed a group of simple substances into something much greater than the sum of their parts. It was alchemy of the simplest kind, and it both enthralled and soothed Carlos.

It took a few minutes of poking through Cecil’s cabinets to find the dishes he needed, but he managed to retrieve a mixing bowl, a casserole dish, and a copper-bottom pan from the suspiciously translucent depths of the shelves. (Carlos decided he would confirm with Cecil later if he did, in fact, have a pocket dimension in his pantry.) Then he set to work.

Carlos was precise when he cooked. It was the third thing a scientist was. Thirty ounces of ricotta slid gelatinously out of their container and into the mixing bowl, followed by exactly one quarter cup of Parmesan, the sharp, salty aroma of the cheese mellowing out under the creaminess of the ricotta. Then two eggs, cracked with one short tap of the wrist on the Formica countertop and carefully excised into the bowl to pool, golden, on the white cheese. The combination beaten with a fork until a homogenous solution formed. Carlos smiled at the simple science of it as he dropped the fork in the sink. It was just like basic chemistry again. No matter how strange Night Vale got or how much he doubted that these were actually chicken eggs, some things stayed the same.

He sweet-talked the cantankerous oven into preheating to the right temperature and frowned at the jar of tomato sauce waiting on the counter. Normally, Carlos preferred to make his tomato sauce from scratch. It made everything taste fresher, and if he had the time to make the pasta too, so much the better. But it was five already and Cecil would be home in just over an hour.

So Carlos poured a layer of the sub-par tomato sauce into the casserole dish, spreading it with the back of a spoon until an even consistency was achieved. He promised himself he would make this for Cecil again sometime when he really had the time to devote to it. The noodles came next, arranged so no edges overlapped and the entire casserole was covered. He carefully scored, then broke, two noodles to fill the small spaces left at the end of the dish. Achieving maximum results meant ensuring that all parts of the experiment - no, of dinner, Carlos corrected himself - were consistent.

Another layer of sauce, some fresh spinach leaves, precisely one half of the cheese mixture, noodles - Carlos let himself get lost in the careful, almost artistic arrangement of layers in the dish, finishing with a final layer of noodles and sauce. It was a familiar routine; Carlos had made this dish often during grad school. It took very little attention, would last him several days, was nutritious and filling, and could be as easily eaten cold out of a tupperware while lab culture analyses ran as it could off a table with candles and a date.

When the oven had informed Carlos (with the maximum amount of profanity contained in a GE oven’s vocabulary) that it was preheated, Carlos covered the lasagna in foil, put it in the oven for an hour, and turned his attention to the head of broccoli waiting on the counter. Turning all his experience with scalpels on the small paring knife he favored, he cut the broccoli into florets and dropped them into the pot of water boiling on the stove. 

He couldn’t help watching in fascination as the boiling water hit the tiny air pockets in the broccoli and turned it bright green. Transformation through heat and water. The two building blocks of all known life narrowed to tenderizing a single plant. It made Carlos want to stand there and watch until the broccoli boiled away into mush, mixing with the water and forming a new solution that could still harbor life. But he restrained himself and poured the broccoli into a colander waiting in the sink. The cheese sauce base was a simple solution of milk and some of Carlos’ very illegal flour stash stirred in to add viscosity. The melted cheddar made a rich, sunny sauce. It reminded Carlos, as he tossed it with the bright green broccoli, of one of Cecil’s favorite shirts, the one he most often wore on lazy Sundays. He checked the clock. Five thirty. For once, time seemed to be working with him.

The chocolate lava cakes Carlos set about making next were an experiment in the purest terms. He had never made the recipe before, and in fact had never even had chocolate lava cake. But Cecil had nearly been drooling into his mic when a Domino’s sponsored spot on the show had talked about them a few weeks before and Carlos had made a mental note. So he set about melting chocolate and butter (at the exact melting point he found in a very scientific Google search), whisking in vanilla and a beaten egg (but not before the chocolate had cooled below the cooking point of the egg), stirring in some more of his precious flour supply, and pouring them into two small ramekins he and Cecil had found at Tuesday Morning and which Carlos had bought because Cecil was nearly beside himself with “how cute they were!” 

He had just pulled the lasagna, cooked and with mozzarella melted on top into a gooey, broiler-kissed glory, out of the oven and convinced the appliance to switch its temperature to 400 F when he heard Cecil’s key in the door. Carlos scooped up the bowl of broccoli with one hand and the lasagna with the other and set them on the table just as Cecil walked through the door.

Carlos had always loved cooking. It reminded him of simpler days; it helped him stay self-reliant, the first thing a scientist was; it brought him back to the building blocks of what he loved about his career; it allowed him to create wonderful experiences he could share with his family and friends. It was perhaps not his chief joy in life, but it was a sort of zen for him, something that he could always count on to make him happy. But when Cecil walked through that doorway, all of Carlos’ reasons for loving cooking were suddenly and totally eclipsed.

The radio host entered looking worn and haggard. His violet eyes had matching purple crescents under them. His shoulders were slumped. His feet dragged. Even his blond hair seemed to droop. He looked like he wanted to either pass out or cry. And then his eyes landed on the food on the table. They traveled over the clean, white plates set carefully in the center of deep blue placemats with silverware twinkling like constellations on either side. They took in the white candles glowing in their holders in the middle of the table. They moved onto the bottle of red wine sitting with the cork halfway out beside two glasses, and at last, they fell on Carlos, standing there, almost holding his breath.

Carlos was a scientist. He observed transformations and reactions and catalysts all the time. He had spent the evening watching alchemy before his very eyes. But no chemical change he had ever witnessed was as beautiful as the transformation happening before him then.

Cecil seemed to almost literally light up. His eyes widened and his expression became so radiant it was as though a beam of sunshine had suddenly blazed out beneath him, illuminating his features. His shoulders lifted, his chest expanded joyfully, and his whole demeanor changed in a single instant that Carlos wished he had thought to film so he could slow it down and study it, memorize the series of shifts that brought about such a miracle.

Cecil stood there beaming for another moment before he found his voice.

“Carlos, did you - did you cook dinner for me?” His tone held such wonder it was as though he were asking if Carlos had reversed the sunset for him.

“Um, yeah, I did,” Carlos said, smiling and feeling a wave of bashfulness settle over him. “It, um, it seemed like you had a rough day at work, and I just thought - well, I thought you could use some comfort food.”

Cecil crossed the room to Carlos in two strides and the scientist suddenly found his arms full of a deliriously happy radio host kissing him like he was the most precious thing on earth.

“Thank you,” Cecil said when he pulled away, and his voice thrummed with joy. “Sweet, darling Carlos, thank you.” He kissed Carlos again, and the scientist could feel a goofy grin spreading over his lips as Cecil stepped away to look back at the table.

“ _ De nada,”  _ he said a little dizzily.

Cecil excused himself to the bathroom to wash his hands (though not before kissing Carlos heartily one more time) and Carlos put the lava cakes in to bake. Then they sat together at the table and Carlos discovered a whole host of new reasons to love cooking.

“Oh my gods, Carlos, this is the most amazing thing I have ever put in my mouth! Well, second most amazing.” The radio host gave Carlos a lewd wink, and he blushed.

“I had no idea you cooked, much less this well! You never cease to amaze me.”

“Unmerciful masters, I want to bathe in this cheese sauce. I want you to make a whole tub of it for me, and then I want to cover every inch of myself in it and then - well.” Another wink.

“Did you call Old Woman Josie for this lasagna recipe? You must have, there is no way something this divine can possibly happen without help from the Erikas.”

“Darling Carlos, I know time doesn’t work here, and I honestly wish it worked a little bit less. I believe I would like to spend the rest of my days eating this meal.”

And when Carlos brought out the lava cakes, dusted with some powdered sugar and topped with a single strawberry and a mint leaf each, Cecil’s eyes actually filled with tears.

“You remembered,” he said tremulously. “You remembered that I wanted to try these. And you made them. For me.” He pulled Carlos down for a kiss that had Carlos’ knees turning to jelly when the scientist set the little cake in front of him.

The sound Cecil made when the first bite of lava cake passed his lips was positively pornographic. Carlos certainly enjoyed his own cake, but somehow, he was much more interested suddenly in his mouth being elsewhere as he watched the radio host absolutely melt as he placed each bite on his tongue. 

Carlos was tactful and patient, though, and he knew Cecil might want to just relax after his day. So when his boyfriend had licked up every last morsel of chocolate from his plate, he contented himself with pressing a kiss to his hair before scooping up his plate and taking the dishes to the kitchen.

He stood in front of the sink, a gentle smile curving his lips, and soaped up the plates, his hands falling into the familiar motions easily. But before he got further than setting the first dish to dry, he found warm arms twined around his waist. Cecil pressed a kiss to the back of his neck.

“Thank you for dinner, my darling Carlos,” he murmured. “It was perfect.” Carlos leaned back into his embrace, his wet hands resting on the edge of the sink.

“It seemed like you had a rough day. I know having a good meal always makes me feel better.”

“ _ You _ make me feel better,” Cecil said, kissing the side of Carlos’ neck. “But, I am afraid, Mr. Scientist, that you may have doomed yourself tonight.”

“Oh?” Carlos asked, grinning and turning in Cecil’s arms to face him. His boyfriend’s eyes were alight with mischief and affection.

“Now I know you can cook, and how  _ well _ you do it, I’m going to be begging you for meals all the time.”

Somehow, Carlos found he wouldn’t mind that a bit.

**Author's Note:**

> As someone who has (relatively recently) discovered a love of cooking, I just had to write this fic. Cooking is chemistry, Carlos is a scientist, the boys are sweet, and schmoop ensues. The recipes referenced are all real (and delicious), and I'll include links below.
> 
> Kudos are amazing and comments make me over the moon happy. If you'd like to talk about this fic, the boys, lasagna, or how cute it is that animals have furry eyelids, feel free to email me at teatearsandbbc@gmail.com
> 
> As always, thanks for reading!
> 
> http://allrecipes.com/recipe/236364/ragu-no-boiling-lasagna/  
> http://www.geniuskitchen.com/recipe/broccoli-with-cheese-sauce-269646  
> http://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/molten-chocolate-cakes


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